We're back! These episodes of The Good Doctor are about figuring out what's right and what we do when we know it. They’re about our decisions. And about learning that sometimes there are no happy endings because we can't save everyone. Time for a review!
Here we go!
The Good Doctor has this gift of making us cry without meaning to, right? This show is capable of touching all those sensitive fibers, putting them to the surface and only touching your heart, sometimes destroying it, others, only fracturing it, at other times it scratches it and those marks remain forever.
These last two episodes of The Good Doctor are of this kind that scratches your heart, they break it in some way that even if the wound heals, the scar remains.
We start with Glassy and Lea. She goes looking for him because she knows that what she did with patient opinions was going to bite her ass and she doesn't know what else to do. Lea needs Glassy to fix it. But here are two problems: Glassy is not everyone's problem solver and Lea is the one who must be honest with Shaun and overcome her fears about what comes next.
Regarding Glassy, as we speak, everyone needs Glassy to help them, for him to be there for them, but who is there for him? Nobody. He's silently screaming for help, for God's sake. Glassy feels that no one needs him right now because everyone made their life without taking him into account and when they do it is just because they need something from him but no one comes up to him and asks "Glassy, how are you?" “Glassy, how can I help you?" Nobody stays long enough to do it.
So Glassy feels worthless and he feels like nobody cares, others only care what they need from him but not him. And he hates it, so he needs to getaway. He needs to breathe and start over in another place where he knows no one, where no one needs him, where no one expects anything from him, where he can find himself.
It’s a place where he hides because he feels lonely.
That Lea goes looking for him wanting something from him doesn’t help at all. She makes him feel, again, like only what he has to offer, to fix, matters. But, in the end, it’s his ex-wife who makes him see that he is not alone. Yes, everyone is looking for him to fix something in his life but they do it because they need him. They are not acting rightly, they are not knowing how to see that he also has problems and needs them by his side but that doesn’t mean that they don’t need him, that they don’t want him in their life.
Part of growing up is following our path, making our own decisions, and solving our problems, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need our friends, our family, by our side. We need them. We always do, although sometimes we don’t know how to ask for help or know how to show how much we need them, how much they matter to us.
Shaun is Glassy's son in all that matters and he considers him his father. Of course, he needs Glassy, he wants him next to him.
Shaun of all people doesn’t know exactly how to show how much he wants Glassy by his side, how much he misses him, that is why he insists so much about those suits, about the wedding, because he only wants him to be there, by his side but he doesn’t know how to prove it.
Thanks to his ex-wife, Glassy has this closure that he so badly needed, not only to what is happening now in his life but also in his past. He never stopped feeling guilty for the death of his daughter and is aware that her death and his closeness to Shaun were two of the great reasons why his marriage failed.
But now, that broken marriage finally got to speak honestly. Yes, she blamed Glassy too, and seeing the way he became Shaun's father… it hurt her because she made him feel like he was trying to replace their daughter.
But time not only heals wounds, but it also makes us see things with more perspective, with a cooler head. Their daughter will never come back and Glassy has blamed himself enough, he was also suffering and Shaun…he is his son, he feels him that way and you cannot control what you feel, but he will never replace his daughter, it was never that the intention.
And now, both can close this chapter of their lives that has been open for so long and, whether they realize it or not, has affected their lives for years.
That conversation gives Glassy the courage to talk to Shaun, to be there for him because now he needs him and he needs Shaun. That conversation gives Glassy the courage to go talk to Shaun so they can both be there for each other.
And when Glassy goes to meet him, Shaun is exploding after everything that happened and yells the truth about him… indeed, Glassy wasn't there and he needs him, Shaun needs him so bad it hurts. Glassy is his father and it feels like he has abandoned him like his biological father did and it's just too much to bear. Not from him. But Glassy is there, right next to him, hugging him, comforting him, wiping his tears, and holding his hand, as only a father can do.
On the other hand, we have Lea. She went looking for Glassy out of fear of the consequences of her lie. She needed Glassy to tell her what to do but the thing is, she knows what to do: she has to be honest. There is no other way to do things. She never treated Shaun like someone else, like someone she had to hang out with under eggshells, not knowing how to act around him. She always treated him like anyone else. And not even she should change now.
But that's precisely what scares her. Lea feels like she always screws up when she has something or someone good in her life. And now she feels that she is on the edge of the cliff ... and she can fall off the cliff at any moment. Lea is afraid that this lie could make her fall off the cliff. But when you lie ... that's how you feel. Always on guard, always waiting to fall off the cliff, always praying not to. That is the price.
And the worst thing is that lies are like cobwebs. One lie leads to a bigger one and that one to an even bigger one. The only way out of that is, to be honest, and hope the relationship is strong enough to hold out, even if it's tough on the edges at first.
Of course, when Lea is honest with Shaun, he fails to understand this. Shaun is pragmatic and rational about this. She lied to him, betrayed his trust, he can't trust her, and he can't marry someone he doesn't trust. But is this true? No, of course not.
I mean, the disappointment behind a lie, the lack of confidence, is the logical reaction and yeah, Lea lost Shaun's confidence but does that mean that he will never trust her again? It is not like this. What happens with the people we love the most is that they are the ones who can do us the most damage, but they are also the people we struggle the most to forgive.
Shaun is confused, angry, and disappointed. He doesn't see a way out. But that he doesn’t see it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Lea will regain Shaun's trust and he will understand her reasons because he will listen to her and will learn to put himself in her place and forgive mistakes, just as the people who love him learned to forgive him.
#Shea is strong enough to resist even if the edges are hard for a while. This will help them grow as a couple, I'm sure. And I'm still looking for my dress for their wedding that I bet we'll see in the final season.
Shaun's patients in these two episodes touched our hearts. We saw how he and Park faced off for the first time. And I think this will be key for #Shea in the sense that Shaun, despite his determination to fight the impossible, in the end, was able to put himself in Park's place and understand what he was doing and what Park was right and he was wrong.
He was able to understand Park's position, his part of the reason in all this, and solved what he did wrong, in addition, he reached a middle ground and gave that father the closure that he needed with his son. A closure that Shaun fought for.
Somehow, Shaun was able to understand what was right between two bad choices and how easily one can go wrong when he desperately wants to do the right thing.
This will go a long way toward helping Shaun understand Lea, once the anger and disappointment start to dissipate a bit to make way for other things.
And the case of that baby… it just broke my heart. It's not Shaun's fault. Sometimes happy endings just don't exist but it's inevitable for him to feel guilty and feel like he didn't do enough, even though he did everything he could and more. They all did.
Morgan is competitive and she achieved one of her goals, but at what cost? She’s playing with a dangerous line. For her, despite everything, patients come first. She took the risk of quitting being a surgeon for a patient and now she's selling that well-being for kissing Salen's ass. I don't know if this fits with Morgan's growth over the years.
In any case, this is dangerous and there will come a point where she will have to choose. Will she do the right thing? I trust so.
Meanwhile, the new friendship between Salen and Morgan continues from strength to strength, just like the relationship between Salen and Andrews and I don't think either of the two ends well because Andrews is in the same dangerous line as Morgan but he is much more into Salen's sphere and he’s is at great risk of losing himself in it.
I can't bear them together.
That's why I like that Park anchors Morgan to the present, the here and now, to what is important. Because Morgan loves him and is capable of not dragging him to Salen and, although he loves her and gives in when going to that dinner, for her, because it’s important to her, Park helps Morgan not to lose the compass of where the right side is and where is Salen. Perhaps that love that unites them will be the only thing that will help her save herself.
And here is when The Good Doctor leaves us until spring. It's too many months! But the wait will be worth it.
Agree? Disagree? Don’t hesitate to share it with us in the comments below!
The Good Doctor returns Spring 2022 on ABC.
